Final Move
by Eve Of The Apocalypse
Summary: And of course it was John talking the whole time, trying to pull him out of sleep. Of course. It always comes back to John. How was it that he hadn't consider that factor before?


**A/N: This story takes place sometime between The Empty Hearse and The Sign of The Three, so pre-wedding, but there's no animosity left over between John and Sherlock from Reichenbach.**

**This is my first Sherlock story- I've written other stories, but for different fandoms and under different pen names, but this is my first foray into Sherlock. If there's any inconsistencies with the plot (like, I don't know, does Sherlock not like Earl Grey tea or something?...) or with any medical information (I have no training in that field whatsoever apart from the books I read when I was little, so if you notice something off with my descriptions of medical ailments) I'd really like to know so I can fix it! Just PM me, I love to talk :-) And reviews are always a nice thing to see in my inbox :-P**

**Warnings: One use of the 'f-word'. Sad parts. Nothing we can't really handle. I don't really think there are any triggers.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Sherlock, I'd be writing scripts, not FanFiction.**

_"Sherlock."_

Somebody was calling him.

_"Sherlock."_

He must know this person. There is too much familiarity in the voice for it to be a stranger, or even a casual acquaintance. A friend is calling him. He can tell from the cadence of the tone. It's the sort of inborn, gut feeling where he just knows something. A hunch, that's what normal people would call it colloquially. Except it wasn't a hunch. It was a fact. He simply hadn't gathered enough evidence to back it up yet.

_"Sherlock."_

If whoever it was would just stop talking, he could deduce the origin of the voice. But how was he supposed to think with all this noise, this calling, bouncing around in his skull? Reverberating, echoing. Screaming at him for attention. It was so hard to think when there was new information yet to be processed, knocking at the edges of his thoughts.

_"Sherlock."_

If the voice would just stop talking…

_ "Sherlock."_

He was unconscious, anyway. That much even an average idiot could figure out. Unconscious, or perhaps asleep. It had to be one or the other. Much more likely, though, for it to be unconscious. He was on a case, after all, and he would never sleep on a case. So he must be unconscious, but… why?

_"Sherlock."_

The voice was much too insistent for its own good. He couldn't think properly, not if the voice kept pouring into his brain. He should really make whoever it was be quiet. He needed to think. To understand, where he was, why he was there, if it was safe to open his eyes. Then, perhaps, he could think about who was calling him. But gauging the situation took precedence, always.

_"Sherlock!"_

His eyes shot open, and the world entered into sudden clarity. Sleep, then, he decided. He must have been asleep, because waking from unconsciousness always involved having to manually wake up his body after his mind had time to surface. And even then, the world would be tilted, hazy, and foggy, like his head was stuffed with cotton that was spilling out his ears. The body, he told himself, is little more than transport for the mind. But such fragile transport it is. A body needs constant attention and upkeep. It needs sustenance, sleep, and all manners of care, else it protest with pain.

How inconvenient.

"Oh good, you're here," says the voice, and Sherlock makes quick note of the how odd the response is, considering the small pieces of his circumstances that he's managed to stitch together in his wakefulness. Certainly he's here, wherever here is in the first place. Where else would he be, really?"

"John," Sherlock blurts out, before he hardly realizes that he's made the decision to speak. It isn't a question, but rather an affirmation. A word spoken for the sake of having been spoken. Chosen, perhaps, because of its familiarity. Its pleasant connotations.

Sentiment. Mycroft will be disappointed.

He sits up swiftly, and cranes his neck around to gauge his surroundings. A cursory glance reveals the common, unassuming interior of 221B Baker Street. The living room, to be more precise about it. Home. And of course it was John talking the whole time, trying to pull him out of sleep. Of course. It always comes back to John. How was it that he hadn't consider that factor before?

"Always old John, isn't it?" asks John pleasantly, for indeed that was who had been leaning over him and calling, like he read Sherlock's mind. Except that's not possible. Deducing people's thoughts without their consent or knowledge is Sherlock's area of expertise. It's the skill he built his life around, and seeing John appear to tap into the rare ability with such ease is disconcerting. He's not used to this feeling of openness, his mind being laid bare to the scrutiny of another like a puzzle with no clear picture at the end. Is this how others feel when he deduces them? If so then maybe they're justified when they tell him to piss off.

Sherlock files away the musings, swings his legs over the edge of the couch he had apparently been sleeping on, and adjusts the crisp, white collar of his shirt. And then he wonders why he would wear white, when he's well aware that all the color accomplishes is washing out his already pale skin. But the color of his shirt is hardly important right now.

"I was asleep?" he asks John, raising an eyebrow, having finished with his collar. He makes note of the way a slightly rueful smile passes over John's soft features before he opens his mouth to answer.

"I suppose you could say that," John replies with a noncommittal shrug. It's not really a reply, though, and it's unlike John to be so unnecessarily indirect.

"The case, though, what about the case?" Sherlock presses, vaulting over the coffee table to follow John, who had left for the kitchen to go make tea. The Rathbone case, of course. Two sisters, identical twins, murdered miles apart. Both found by landlords looking for rent, their guts spilled over the floor.

"Solved," says John easily, switching on the kettle and rifling through the cabinets for tea bags. "Or at least, it will be soon." He shuts the cabinet, having found the slightly dented box of tea bags, and the hinges whine in feeble protest. Whistling without a care in the world, he begins the horribly mundane process of unwrapping the little bags and draping them into a pair of teacups he seems to have procured from nowhere. He turns to Sherlock and studies him with his doctor's eye.

"Well go sit down, then," he tells his friend. "You're looking a bit peaky."

Sherlock's too confused to do much more than nod in reply before turning around dazedly and going back to collapse on the couch.

John brings the tea over promptly, the two appropriately sweetened servings balanced on a plastic tray with plate of chocolate biscuits balanced between them. He bends over slightly and begins clearing an area on the coffee table for the tray, pushing away stacks of paper, maps, and photographs in an effort to make room.

"What are you doing!" yelps Sherlock, scrambling to recover the displaced information before John can manage to further upset the delicate layout. "That's for the case!"

"Oh, it's alright," John says dismissively, setting down the tray in the newly cleared space despite a new protest beginning on Sherlock's lips. The left side of his mouth quirks up in a gentle smile and he picks up his own cup of tea, the one with sugar but no milk, and gestures for Sherlock to do the same. Discomforted by his best friend's apparent callousness, Sherlock obliges warily. However, he does note with a degree of contentment that John added exactly the correct ratio of milk to his cup of Earl Grey, and the otherwise clear, black liquid has taken on a creamy, translucent brown color.

John settles easily into his normal seat, the easy chair he had claimed for his own since the first time he had ever visited the flat and sat down for his first cup of Mrs. Hudson's impeccably brewed tea. He adjusts himself slightly, crossing and uncrossing his legs, before allowing himself to relax, and he holds the cup of bitter tea to his lips as he lets himself gaze thoughtfully out the window. However, there's still something slightly off about his manner. John's holding himself much too stiffly, in a way reminiscent of the how he used to stand when Sherlock first met him. But that's not right, because John had since allowed his soldierly posture to soften slightly during his past years of civilian life, most noticeably while Sherlock had been away destroying Moriarty's web. It was one of the first things Sherlock noticed about him when he returned from his long time away. And then there was the slightly vacant look in his eyes, and Sherlock couldn't tell the nature of his thoughts, but he did know they were unusual. Something was bothering John, and he was hiding it. There was something about that fact that didn't please Sherlock in the slightest.

They sit in a relative silence for a few more comfortable minutes, punctuated only by the barely perceptible sound of breathing, John seemingly lost in thought and Sherlock in deduction. Both drain their tea fairly quickly, but neither makes a move to refill their cups or touch the plate of biscuits still sitting on the coffee table. Finally, it's John who speaks up.

"I suppose we're just not going to talk about it, then?" he asks with a longsuffering sigh, effectively breaking the silence. The sound of his voice carries easily across the still air, disturbing the calm.

"Talk about what?" Sherlock counters almost immediately, in an effort to wheedle John's secrets out of him. But there's no such luck. because John neglects to answer, instead leaning forward to set his teacup back on the tray with a hollow clinking sound. He picks up one of the dry biscuits, and takes small bites of it as he settles back into his armchair to continue staring out the window.

More minutes pass, but this time they're tense with questions and secrets left unvoiced, and Sherlock knows intuitively that it's his turn to speak first now. He coughs uncomfortably to clear a phantom blockage in his throat and shifts his legs, which follow down the length of the couch, before opening his mouth.

"Why are you here?" he asks, looking down at his fingers which are wrapped around the empty teacup. Somehow he feels like it's the teacup keeping him grounded. Keeping him from floating away.

"Well, I live here, don't I?" John replies with a tired, humorless smile, reaching for another biscuit. He looks up at Sherlock as his fingers wrap around a second wafer. "Care for one?"

Sherlock shakes his head and gives a dismissive hand wave before returning his hand to the porcelain cup. John puts down the extra biscuit and leans back into his easy chair.

Sherlock steeples his hands beneath his chin and leans back against the hard edge of the arm of the couch, the teacup still looped by the handle around his left pointer finger. The residual dregs are probably leaking out of the teabag, dripping onto the couch, but he can't bring himself to care. "No," he negates quietly, his voice low and careful so that it can hardly be heard, but with an unmistakable tinge of confusion coloring the edges of his words. "You moved out. Years ago." He allows his pale eyes to snap towards his former roommate and stares at his face to ascertain the forthcoming reaction.

John shrugs, seemingly impervious to Sherlock's subtle interrogation. Sherlock decides he's beginning to despise shrugging. He can't read a shrug.

"It's all relative, really," John replies finally, turning from the window to face Sherlock. "Depends on where you think you are."

It's an infuriatingly cryptic answer, and Sherlock provides John with the most obvious reply he can think of, even though he knows it's very likely wrong. "221B Baker Street," he says instantaneously, crossing his legs like a schoolchild and leaning forward on the couch. His eyes bore into John's, but the other man doesn't flinch. Instead, he breathes out agitatedly and cards his hands through his graying hair like he is always wont to do when he's under mild duress.

"No, think, Sherlock. Think! What's the last thing you remember?"

A memory, suppressed under layers of distraction, threatens at the entrance of his mind, and Sherlock twitches his head to side in order to push it away. He quickly turns back forwards to narrow his eyes at John before folding in half slightly at the middle. He doesn't want to follow it. The situation at hand, here with John, is far too outstanding to willingly abandon for information he can so easily access later.

"Whatever's happening right now, you're unwilling to tell me what it is," Sherlock states. It's much less deduction than it is plain fact. "Why is that?"

John shakes his head and stands up from his chair. "You're not thinking_, _Sherlock," he scolds, like an irate schoolteacher to a particularly slow student. "You have to _think!_"

Sherlock stands too, and his hands fall to his sides balled in fists, the teacup still interwoven into his left hand. He shuts his eyes and presses two fingers to each of his temples. The memory threatens again, more insistently this time.

"Think," John wheedles harshly, not acting like himself at all. "Think!"

_"Think!" yells the voice. "Don't tell me, after all this thinking you didn't know!" And it's not John's voice anymore, it's someone else's voice. It's his voice. Who killed the twins, but that's not important anymore because the twins were like chess pieces, expendable, and they were used and discarded so the kings could do battle. It was him, and his voice is too familiar, so familiar that it hurts and it sends a shockwave down his whole body, because it's not possible, simply not possible for-_

"NO!" Sherlock bellows, forcing himself from the memory so violently he stumbles backwards and his legs knock against the couch. His heart is racing inside his chest. He feels flushed, and much too light, like his blood is pumping through his veins at double time. It's reminiscent of a cocaine high, but without the blissful euphoria. There's just a sense of being overwhelmed, so overwhelmed he can't think, can't _function-_

"Think!" John yells again, too insistently, and why won't he just stop? Can't he see that Sherlock doesn't want to go there?

Doesn't want to. Don't make me. Doesn't want, doesn't want, doesn't want doesn't want doesn't want.

"NO!" he shouts again, and wheels around to fling the teacup at the wall, the same wall with the horrible paper on it that he shot with John's gun all those years ago, and it shatters into so many shards with a sharp, crashing sound louder than a breaking teacup has any right to be-

_And he's dangerous. He's so dangerous. Warning lights fire all along Sherlock's brain, and he doesn't have a gun, but he wishes he does so he can just shoot him now, shoot him and end it, because whatever game he had been playing before isn't worth it now. How did Sherlock not see this coming? How? He should know, he should know by now that things don't end. That this would come back to haunt him. But he wasn't thinking, couldn't have been thinking enough because he just didn't get it until it was right in front of his face, and Mycroft was right, this is just like him, jumping into danger at a moment's notice, at the drop of a hat, but it's so much worse now that he's back and John's back with him, and they're solving crimes again together. Facing danger together. Looking at the end together._

_One last hurrah, John had said with a grin when Sherlock called with a case in his head and excitement on his lips, one final case before he settled into marriage, into Mary, into peaceful domesticity like he deserves to after all he's been through. One last hurrah. The words come back to haunt. No, this can't be. Won't be. Sherlock won't let it be._

_"All those years! Wasted," the man exclaims, quietly, mockingly, the last word is a whisper, and his eyes are darker than midnight and they're staring into Sherlock like he enjoys this game, but it stopped being fun a long, long time ago. Quiet. He's so much more dangerous when he's quiet. Next to him John tightens his iron grip on his revolver, so much so that his knuckles turn white. All Sherlock can hear is everyone breathing, breathing and the blood rushing across his eardrums and the laughing and why won't they just shut up, shut up so he can think, and the water drips down from the leaky ceiling and onto the concrete floor of the pool._

_The pool. Again the pool. Poetic justice. It ends where it begins. Almost four years, hundreds of deaths, the years spent in cells and in pain and all the threats and broken promises and all the blood. And after all that, it ends where it began. Full circle. Did it mean anything, what happened? Everything he put himself through, everything he was put through without his consent? Unfair. So unfair. It had all been a trap. The twins had been the trap, the trap to lure him, and it had worked, had piqued his interest. He should have suspected when all of the clues led to the night guard at the pool, the pool that would be imprinted on his memory for as long as he lived, and he remembers John making a stupid comment about the coincidence and Sherlock had laughed despite himself, because he was always one step behind when it came to this and hadn't known, or suspected, not a thing because he hadn't thought. Think._

_Lestrade should be here, soon. Here with Anderson and Donovan and the rest of his annoying backup squad and they might all hate him with a vicious passion, but they're at least competent at their jobs, and they'll at least scare him away. Back to whatever might be left of the web. Back into the shadows to plan the next move in his giant game of chess. Cell phone. Of course, his Blackberry is in his coat pocket, and Lestrade is probably tracking it, has been since he realized Sherlock's probably gone out alone to find the murderer, dragged John along with him. On his way, grumbling about unnecessary danger to hide his worry, but he's not worrying enough because he can't know, can't possibly know who's behind this all. Not a thug, not a vengeful ex, not a mental patient on a random spree of murders. On his way. He must be. Sherlock just has to buy time until then._

_But time. There's never, ever, ever enough of it._

_"This is fun," said the crazy man, earnestly. "Missed me?" And he twirled the gun between his fingers, in circles and circles and circles, and looked up expecting an answer._

"But he's dead," Sherlock states abruptly, flatly, as he jarred himself from the sour memory. He was back in the living room of his old, familiar flat, standing perfectly still between the couch and the coffee table, hands still poised at his temples and eyes fixated blankly on the broken teacup littering the floor across from him. "I saw him put a gun in his mouth and shoot himself."

"He's back, I guess," John replies quietly, all the pressuring gone and the old, familiar empathy returned to his voice. Sherlock lowers his hands, slowly, and tears his gaze away from the broken china to find his only friend just as he left him, except now his hands are casually in his pockets and he's regarding Sherlock with a vaguely sad sort of gaze.

"It's all for nothing," Sherlock whispered, as the weight of the situation made its presence known. He allowed his legs to disappear from underneath him and he fell in a pathetic heap onto the sofa, burying his head into his hands and letting his fingers entwine into the curls and pull on them painfully. "All those _years,_ John. Everything, gone to waste."

"Yeah, I know," John said with a sigh, and Sherlock felt a familiar weight settle on the couch next to him. "God, don't I know." He laughed shortly, but it was more of a cynical bark. Every ounce of happiness had been drained from his face, and he just looked old, grey, and impossibly tired.

"Where am I?" Sherlock asks abruptly, his head snapping up from its place of despair in his hands. "This," he shakes his head and stands up to pace, shaking his head. "This isn't 221B Baker Street. You don't _live,_" he puts extra emphasis on the word for good measure, "At 221B Baker Street."

"Well, no," John replies. "But it's quite an easy explanation, when you think about it," He shrugs, leaning back into the couch, and impassively watches Sherlock as he paces maniacally across the room from his comfortable vantage point.

Sherlock stops, suddenly, and turns on the heel of his loafer to face John. A wide grin spreads across his face.

"Mind palace," he says with a degree of reverence to his voice, slightly awestruck at the realization. Even though, really, shouldn't it have been obvious?

John nods, nowhere near as impressed. He knew already. "It's a nice place, really," he assures Sherlock, glancing around the imaginary living room and furrowing his brow. "I always thought you were having me on when you when you said it was an actual palace, but then again…" he trailed off. "Here I am." His brow smoothed and and he turned back to look at Sherlock.

"Except you're not you," Sherlock countered, cataloguing every single minute detail wrong with this John that made him deviate from the original. He began his pacing anew. "You're just a figment of my imagination."

"I suppose so," John said. "But I'm as good as you've got."

Sherlock didn't quite have an answer to that.

"You see, though," John continues as he stands up from the couch, not bothering to wait for an answer, as if he could sense there was none forthcoming. He quickly traverses the distance between them and stands directly in front of Sherlock, holding his head tilted upwards to compensate for the height difference. "You're really not supposed to be here."

"I'm not?" Sherlock challenges, raising an errant eyebrow.

"Do you really think, in the middle of a confrontation with your greatest nemesis, that you would voluntarily retreat to your mind palace and enjoy a cup of tea with your old flatmate John?"

"No," Sherlock says, shaking his head and resuming his pacing.

"So therefore,"

"I must have been forced here," finishes Sherlock, stepping on John's words, reaching the end of the small room and turning around again. "By a large trauma. My mind couldn't process it all at once, so it sent me to a familiar, soothing place."

"Very good," John praised approvingly with a short, militaristic nod. "Now, there are two forms of trauma, psychological and physical. What you have to do is deduce which one it is you're suffering from."

This gave Sherlock pause, and he stopped his pacing to stare off into the distance.

"Sherlock, what form of trauma are you most likely to have suffered?"

"He didn't bring any bombs this time," Sherlock stated. "The building was structurally sound and he came alone, without any snipers. However-"

"Yes?" said John, quirking his head impatiently.

"He was waving a fully loaded gun with the safety turned off. If he were displaying the gun in an attempt to scare me, he wouldn't have bothered to reload it from the last time he used it. The cartridge wouldn't be completely full." Sherlock fell silent again. The gun had definitely gone off.

"Three things about a gunshot wound that can kill you," John prompted, skipping the details that didn't need to be said aloud and facing Sherlock from the other side of the coffee table.

"Shock, pain, and blood loss, in that order." Sherlock finished breathlessly.

"Shock would have set in immediately. That's what sent you here," pointed out John. "You use your mind palace as a crutch, a sanctuary for when outside stimulus becomes overwhelming. Your body is in severe shock right now, so you've retreated deep into your mind palace until you can get a hold of the situation."

The words were slightly jarring said aloud, but Sherlock ignored it.

"You've been in your mind palace for thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds," John continued.

"Impossible," Sherlock protested, and his hair bounced as he shook his head. "I would have had to process the pain before then." He folded his hands under his chin in thought and paced over to the front door. "But the paramedics would have given me morphine. The pain signals wouldn't get to my brain."

Suddenly, John's beside him again. "Sherlock, you need to think," he says. "It takes how long for a London ambulance to respond to an emergency call?"

"Eight minutes," Sherlock replies breathlessly. "More, since we're on the outskirts of the city."

"Once your body processed the shock, you would start registering to pain in-"

"Approximately forty seconds after the initial entrance wound."

John nodded gravely. "So?"

"Even if the wound was superficial, I would have still registered the pain by now." He folded his hands behind his back, restlessly, and crossed into the kitchen. There was something he wasn't getting. He allowed his palm to come to rest the back of one of the dining chairs and turned away from John as he came to an understanding. He gripped the back of the chair until his knuckles turned white. "I wasn't shot."

Behind him, John nodded gravely. "That leaves psychological trauma."

"No," Sherlock shook his head violently.

"We agree that the gun must have gone off at some point," John continued briskly, as if he wasn't delivering the absolute worst news that Sherlock could imagine.

"No," he repeated, slightly louder, as his vision began to double and come out of focus and his words slowed, like they were being said underwater. His grasp grew so tight on the chair that his hand began to shake.

"Considering his history, it is extremely unlikely that he would have missed a shot intended to kill or main. Given his background of mental illness and unpredictability, it would have been very difficult to predict when he would choose to shoot."

This is wrong. John shouldn't be behind him, talking about something like this without as much as a tremor to his voice. Sherlock opened his mouth and took in a rattling, gasping breath, like a man saved from drowning, and had to make a conscious effort to remember to keep breathing through the torrent of emotion he was barely managing to keep at bay.

"NO!" He screamed, so loudly that the reverberation shook the walls. Before he became cognizant of what he what doing, he had grasped the wooden chair with both hands and was throwing it aimlessly. It splintered against the countertop and knocked the toaster over, but that wasn't enough. Blindly, he kicked over the table, too, and it came clattering and crashing, sadly to the tile, as the world's only consulting detective collapsed onto his knees on the floor. His hands pressed against his thighs, fingernails digging painfully into the soft flesh beneath the silk trousers. He screwed his eyes shut, resisting the tears that threatened to spill over should he relinquish control. He can't break down now. He has to get out of the mind palace and back into the real world. He has to plan, but not for the next move. The game is over. He has to plan for revenge.

"I would have thought you'd have grown out of temper tantrums by now, brother mine," cackled a voice from directly in front of him, and Sherlock opened his eyes to find a pair of black penny loafers and the tapered end of an umbrella resting on the pristine marble his kitchen floor had transformed into. He allowed his eyes to trail up the impeccably dressed body. He stood up to face his brother, attempting to appear strong, ignoring the way his knees still knocked together and his face was tracked with stray tears. He registered that 221B had melted away. He was in the front room of his mind palace.

"But then again," Mycroft mused lightly, leaning on the umbrella like it a crutch with the same easy smile that he knew Sherlock always despised. "You always were so _stupid_." He sneered the last words, leaning into his brother's face.

"Fuck off, Mycroft," he spits dangerously, angrily swiping the wetness from his eyes.

Even as he laughs at his sibling's attempt at viciousness, Mycroft's face hardens perceptibly, and he straightens to his full height, swinging the umbrella jauntily back and forth as he walks over to the grand front doors of the mind palace. The heels of his shoes click rhythmically against the ground as he went.

"Face it," Mycroft says once he has gotten to the double doors and turned. The frosted glass glows brightly with an implacable light that shone through from the real world, and it forms a sort of macabre halo around Mycroft's shadowy form. "John Watson is dead."

Sherlock stays silent, halfhearted protest on his lips. But it would have been futile to try and argue. The evidence John's survival is indisputable.

"However," Mycroft muses further, lolling his head to his other shoulder. "There's still time to find the man who did it. After all, I have connections. If we make haste, dear brother, we can still catch him and make him pay for what he did."

"That won't change anything!" yells Sherlock at his brother, the words reverberating around the vast chamber. Holding his arms out, Sherlock spins hysterically in a circle, still in the center of the room. The blank, white walls and high ceiling swirl and blend around him dizzyingly. "He'll still be _dead,_" he whispers, dropping his arms and ending the cycle. His eyes harden again, and he finishes the brief speech with, "And there's nothing to be done about that."

"Agreed," sighs a familiar voice, and a Sherlock jumps and spins around to see John again, standing nonchalantly in the middle of the vast mind palace, looking just as simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary as Sherlock remembered. The army doctor smiled ruefully, and shifted his weight from one leg to another. He stood out in stark contrast to the completely whitewashed hall around him. "The game is over, Sherlock," he said. "But there's still time for you to play your last move."

Sherlock blinked, slowly, and took a few deep breaths to let his heart rate drop back down to acceptable levels. He looked up, and John quirked a grin again like he always did, and his head bounced slightly as he did so.

Sherlock coughed, awkwardly, and sheepishly started speaking. "When I come back here-" but he was interrupted.

"I'm not going anywhere," John says, a genuine, trademark smile passing over his rounded features. Before he can change his mind, Sherlock takes a step forward and wraps his best friend into a rare hug, and just for that one moment he can feel John's steady pulse, note the temperature of his skin, and take in his distinctive scent of laundry detergent, cotton, and aftershave. It's a split second of bliss that Sherlock knows will never come again.

With a slight choking sound, Sherlock breaks from the hug in one sudden, jerky movement, because he knew if he stayed for one second longer he would never be able to bring himself to let go. He turned away, and glanced at the grandiose front doors with the barest hint of trepidation. Somewhere in the past exchange, Mycroft had vanished, except for the thin, black umbrella still left leaning beside the double doors.

"Good luck," said a voice from behind him, and Sherlock swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded, stiffly. He reached out to touch the double doors so far away, and the hallway in front of him obligingly shortened to allow him easier access. His fingertips rested against the cool glass.

He pushed them open.

Sherlock gasped deeply as all his senses suddenly rushed back to him with a vengeance, like jumping directly into a pool only to find out that the water is just above freezing. The sheer surprise of the sensations forced him to screw his eyes shut, hold his breath, and stay completely still until he grew accustomed to the veritable circus of activity around him.

Soon, the sounds seemed to quiet down, and he decided it was probably safe to open his eyes without causing another forced retreat back into his mind palace. He became aware of a very familiar circumstance. Like so many years before, he was sitting in the back of an ambulance just near wide entrance, except now his knees were drawn up to his chest and the gaudy orange shock blanket was pulled more tightly over his shoulders. It was definitely nighttime, he could tell by the discrepancy between the light in the ambulance and that outside, and a light rain had begun to fall at some point, so the entire scene smelled like wet asphalt. He was positively freezing and the shock blanket didn't seem to be helping much to numb the chill, and he could feel tear tracks streaking his face. His back ached from the uncomfortable position leaning against the side of the ambulance, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked down at his hands and shirt, and realized numbly that both were covered in blood. Beside him sat a mug of tea, origins unknown, and all around him was the sound of a hundred officers and paramedics yelling back and forth to each other. The light inside the ambulance was dizzying, and he realized that was probably what was making his mind palace shine like a Christmas tree.

Only then did he realize that there was someone sitting directly next to him, looking at him with a tinge of worry on his aging face, with one hand resting lightly on Sherlock's upper arm.

"Lestrade," Sherlock managed to choke out by way of greeting, and he coughed as he realized how hoarse his voice was. He had likely worn his throat out screaming. The memory threatened to seep into his consciousness, but he pushed it away. That was something to be processed later.

"Sherlock," Lestrade returned, quietly, moving his hand slightly to squeeze his shoulder in a way he must think was reassuring. "Are you alright?"

He was answered with only an incredulous stare. A paramedic stumbled into the ambulance and, noticing his patient had apparently returned to lucidity, proceeded to hastily gather up a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff to affirm his vitals. Sherlock, though, wasn't in the mood for it, and he brushed off the insistent advances until the paramedic scowled at him and walked off huffily.

"Sorry, stupid question," Lestrade muttered once the intruder was out of earshot, shaking his head and running a hand through his silver hair. A beat of silence passed between them, with Sherlock offering no response. Finally, Lestrade opened his mouth again.

"Anderson's processing… things, over in the pool. I don't know if you'd want to oversee, or help, or… Jesus, I don't know, Sherlock. This is too surreal." He sighed at the conclusion of the halting monologue, and leaned his head back forcefully enough to bang it against the metal siding of the ambulance with a wince and an audible clinking sound.

Sherlock shook his head and bit his lower lip to stop a revival of his meltdown from earlier. He took a shuddering breath before coming up with a response.

"Anderson is adequate at his job," he said hollowly, pulling himself up on unsteady legs. His knee joints creaked in protest as he did so. Evidently, he had been sitting as he was, patella to collarbone, for a while. He brushed imaginary dirt off of his blood soaked shirt and pulled on his Belstaff coat, which had been thrown across a folding chair parked right next to him on the asphalt next to the ambulance. It was damp, but still useful against the October chill. "I have more important matters to pursue."

"What's that, then?" asked Lestrade as he pulled himself to his feet after Sherlock, a degree of trepidation that was probably quite appropriate for the situation.

Sherlock tied the scarf tightly around his neck and flipped up the collar of his coat. Were it not for the cold look in his eyes or the pallor still clinging to his still shocky skin, he would look just as he always did. "I'm going to track down the murderer," he said simply. "And I'm going to kill him." Wordlessly, he turned on his heel and proceeded to briskly walk away from the crime scene, phone already poised to dial Mycroft. There was a lot of planning to do.

"Sherlock!" shouted Lestrade from behind him.

"Don't worry, I'll call John's fiancée," Sherlock called back, biting down the wave of grief that the words carried. In another part of his brain, he wondered how long he would have to mourn before thinking of John stopped being painful. "And I promise not to get into any trouble!"

"No, Sherlock!" he continued, yelling louder as Sherlock continued to walk farther and farther away. "Who are you looking for?"

At that question, Sherlock halted, so suddenly a harried constable practically barreled over him in her haste to get to one place or another. Sherlock ignored whatever apologies she might be shouting over her shoulder, and turned around to face Lestrade through the haze of rain and grief and nighttime.

"Moriarty!" he shouted, and then turned on his heel, already forming in his head his one last move.

**A/N: Oh my god, I'm so sorry, John. And Sherlock. And my readers. But it had to be done.**

**I'll probably be writing more stories on here- I really love this fandom- but fair warning, they'll probably all be angsty like this. Maybe not to the same extent every time, but you know what I mean. I didn't mean for this to be slashy- just some epic bromance- but if you want to put on your slash goggles it's fine by me :-)**

**Speaking of slash and the like- I don't tend to write it. I might try a slash fic sometime in the future, but I don't even really read slash. It's nothing against homosexuality, I'm just not a romance kind of person. So on a similiar note, I won't be writing much romance except whatever's necessary to achieve my ends. And please believe me, I'm absolutely no good with humor or fluff!**

**So there you have it anyway. Reviews if you got 'em. And remember, you're all beautiful.**

**-Eve Of The Apocalypse**


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